The decades before 1900 witnessed the first settlements in the Fullerton area. Little structural evidence remains of this period. Of the earliest times -- those before 1890 -- only a very few buildings remain, most of them of no particular architectural style. The Porter House is an excellent example of the type: attractive but undistinguished. However, square Colonial Revival houses, with hipped roofs and verandahs along at least one side, were also common and particularly favored for grove houses. Only with the increased settlements of the 1890s did architecture become more “stylish.” Late Victorian designs, both Queen Anne and Eastlake as well as some idiosyncratic combinations, characterize much of the house building of the time.

In this agrarian era housing was widely scattered, so neighborhoods in the conventional sense were nonexistent.